The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom

by RaeAnne Thayne

  She spared one more glance at Nicky, at the little lock of hair hanging into his eyes from the widow’s peak, at the freckles scattered across his nose, at the bright excitement glittering in his dark eyes.

  Her heart twisted. Here was her joy: her child, who gave her life purpose, who filled it with love and laughter and sloppy kisses. If he had been closer and not belted snugly into the other side of the truck cab, she would have grabbed him close and smothered him with a few of those sloppy kisses. She contented herself with smiling at him. “I’m sure you’ll have a great time getting to know him.”

  “Colt says he can teach me to rope like he does, too. You think maybe I could rope a couple cows while we’re there?”

  She laughed. “I think you’ll probably have to work up to cows, bud. Maybe he can start you off on something smaller. How about chickens?”

  He rolled his eyes, another mannerism he had picked up on the rodeo circuit. “You don’t rope chickens, Mom,” he said in a disgusted tone of voice that made it sound as if she had just committed the cowboy faux pas of the century.

  The left-hand turn signal suddenly blinked on Colt’s horse trailer, then the brake lights lit up as he slowed. She pumped the old brakes on her truck, then followed him under a log arch with the words Broken Spur Ranch painted in bright red letters, along with what she assumed was a brand, a simple line drawing of a spur broken in half.

  The road was gravel but well maintained, without ruts or washboard bumps to rattle the truck. After only a few hundred yards, the aspen and evergreen forest opened up, revealing wide green meadows that stretched out at least a mile, until they bumped up against the high slopes of a rugged mountain range.

  Colt led the way along the road toward a cluster of buildings. She could only see glimpses of them around his horse trailer until he stopped in front of a huge barn that wore a fresh coat of white paint like an old lady in a sparkling new dress.

  A hundred yards from the barn was a two-story clapboard ranch house with a wide front porch that looked as if it would be the ideal place for sitting and watching the mountains on rainy afternoons.

  Almost before the truck had come to a complete stop, Nicky slipped from his seat belt, shoved open the door and hopped down from the cab. He raced toward Colt’s pickup.

  She followed him, intent on lecturing him about the rules of vehicle safety when the barn doors opened and a man—her host, she had to assume—walked outside.

  He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, with coppery skin stretched over high cheekbones, dark eyes fringed by long, thick lashes and a sharp, aquiline nose.

  She caught herself staring and quickly averted her eyes, feeling a blush heat her cheeks. Instead, she looked for her son, and found him in Colt’s arms. The instant she saw the two of them together, she completely forgot about Colt’s friend.

  Colt was laughing at something Nicky said, and he tilted his head back as he laughed, exposing the corded muscles in his neck.

  Her mouth suddenly felt as dry as the dust that coated her truck. Her stomach tumbled and lurched. Some might have said the other man was the more attractive of the two, but there was something powerful, compelling about Colt that made it impossible for her to look away.

  Still carrying Nicky, he walked toward her. “You made it.”

  She gathered her composure around her and, with effort, managed to return his smile. “I was worried there for a while, especially the last five miles. You never warned me about the switchbacks.”

  “I guess I’m so used to them I don’t even think about them anymore.”

  “Well, I’m still a city girl at heart,” she said, just as his friend reached Colt’s truck.

  “McKendrick. Haven’t seen you around these parts in how long has it been again?” Was it her imagination or did his dark eyes gleam with amusement?

  “Long enough,” Colt answered in what, oddly, sounded like a warning.

  Before she could even try to read the currents here, the man turned to her, yanked off a leather glove and shoved a hand out. “How do, ma’am? I’m Joe Redhawk and I’m pleased to have you on the Broken Spur.”

  The welcome here was genuine, she decided with relief. “Thank you so much for letting us stay here, Mr. Redhawk. I’m Maggie Pr—” She caught herself just in time—“Rawlings. This is my son, Nicholas.”

  Nicky hopped down from Colt’s arms and stared up at the tall rancher, his eyes huge. “Are you a real live Indian?”

  “Nicholas!” She felt her blush heat up a notch and vowed to have a little conversation with her son as soon as possible about good manners and political correctness.

  Redhawk just chuckled, and she was relieved to see he didn’t look as if he had taken offense at the comment. He tilted his hat back and if she hadn’t already decided to like him, she would have made up her mind completely when he knelt to her son’s level. “Sure am. Of the Shoshone tribe. You ever heard of them?”

  Nicky shook his head, still wearing a puzzled expression. “But how can you be an Indian? You look like a cowboy. You got a hat and boots and everything.”

  “I guess sometimes a fella can be both.”

  Nicky seemed content with that answer. He smiled back at the rancher. “Colt says there’s a pony here named Star, and he said I could ride him all by myself.”

  “I think we can arrange that. Why don’t you all come inside my ranch house,” he said, with a strange, amused emphasis on the possessive pronoun, “and I’ll show you to your rooms.”

  “Oh, no,” Maggie said. “I just assumed we’d sleep in the trailer.”

  “Why? There’s plenty of room in the ranch house. Come on, let’s just get you settled inside.”

  “I think I can find the way,” Colt answered dryly. “We wouldn’t want to keep you from all the many things you probably have to do.”

  The rancher laughed. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe how much work there is around here. Finding good help, now that’s the secret. Don’t you agree, McKendrick?”

  “I used to,” he muttered.

  With another bark of laughter, the rancher adjusted his hat. “If you’ll excuse me then, ma’am, I’ll get back to work. Colt here can show you to the guest rooms. Feel free to take any of the bedrooms except the master bedroom on the main floor. That, naturally, is my room.”

  He sent a glittering, amused look at Colt, then turned to Maggie. “Again, welcome to the Broken Spur. I don’t mind tellin’ you, ma’am, I have a strong feeling your visit is really gonna liven things up around the old place.”

  Chapter 9

  Colt held the cellular phone away from his ear and waited for the dust to settle from Beckstead’s explosion about renegade agents and botched investigations. Even with a good foot between the phone and his ear, the SAC’s aggravation rang out loud and clear in the evening air.

  “You don’t check in for days,” Beckstead barked, “and then when you finally do, it’s to tell me you’ve taken it upon yourself to haul our witness to your godforsaken hole-in-thewall ranch in Montana. Not only that, but you haven’t even told her you’re with the Bureau yet. When were you planning on telling her? Before or after she testifies for us?”

  “I’ll tell her when the time is right,” he said when Lane paused to take a breath. “At this point she still doesn’t trust me completely. I wouldn’t be surprised if she disappears again if I were to tell her too soon.”

  He didn’t even wince at the lie. If Maggie trusted anybody right now, he was very much afraid she trusted him. She hadn’t even blinked when he saddled Scout an hour ago and told her the horse needed exercising after the ride here.

  It never would have occurred to her to be suspicious, to guess that he wasn’t out for a pleasure ride, but instead planned to go to the northern border of what was his own damn ranch so he could have the privacy he needed to check in with his superiors at the FBI.

  He leaned his forearms on the split rail fence and watched a hawk ride the currents looking for prey above the ra
w mountains bordering the Broken Spur. He had a sudden fierce urge to be there with the hawk among the currents, or at least racing Scout across the high mountain meadows he knew were hidden amid those craggy peaks.

  Anywhere but here, where he had begun to feel as if he would choke on all of his lies.

  “What’s the progress, then? Have you figured out where she hid Damian’s money and the disk yet?”

  He picked a golfball-size rock from the ground and began to roll it between his fingers. “She didn’t hide anything.”

  “How can you sound so convinced?”

  “I can’t explain it,” he admitted. “She says she doesn’t know where they are, and I believe her.”

  The line was quiet for a few moments. Just when Colt thought he had lost the connection, his boss finally spoke. “I don’t know Maggie Rawlings from Elvis but I do know you. You’ve always had better instincts than any agent I’ve ever known. If you think the woman is a pawn in this whole thing, I have to trust you.”

  “The only thing she knows is that her life has been completely torn apart since she watched Carlo Santori murder her husband a month ago.”

  “You think she’ll be willing to testify against him?”

  And spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder in fear of retaliation. Or in a witness protection program someplace where, more than likely, she would never be able to practice medicine again.

  He threw the rock as hard as he could and watched it scare up a couple of rooster pheasants. “I don’t know,” he said gruffly, then admitted, “Probably.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?” Lane’s tone was brisk. “Tell her you’re FBI and let’s get her and the kid into protective custody.”

  It was exactly what he should do, leave her safety in someone else’s hands and move on to the next job. But the idea left a sour taste in his mouth. “She’s as safe at the Broken Spur as she would be in custody. This is the last place Damian would think to look for her.”

  Damian hated the place. Colt had brought him here during his first year, hoping to impress the smooth, experienced agent he had come to admire so much. He could still remember the glow of pride he’d felt driving under the arch leading into the ranch. And he could still feel the sting of Damian’s ill-concealed disdain for the gravel road, the simple furnishings in the ranch house.

  He had been so damn stupid. Stupid and naive, too awed by Damian’s stellar reputation in the Bureau to trust those instincts Beckstead was just talking about, too green to question some of his partner’s shadier practices. Unwilling to believe what was right in front of his face, he had chosen to turn the other way when cases began to fall apart and witnesses started disappearing.

  They were assigned to a team investigating a string of a dozen bank robberies when the truth about Damian’s double life had finally become impossible for him to deny.

  The Bureau suspected a gang of three men in the bank robberies, two who did the actual robberies and one cunningly elusive mastermind. After months of work, they were close to making an arrest of one of the two bank robbers when he’d received an anonymous call on where to find both of the suspects with some of the stolen marked bills.

  Unable to pass up the chance to bring them in, he and Damian had rushed to the scene, a rundown apartment building in a seedy area of San Jose. Colt only planned to snoop around the building a little while they waited for other agents to arrive for the arrest, but then, out of the blue, a bullet whizzed by his ear, fired from one of the apartments.

  He remembered running for cover and yelling for Damian to back him up, but his partner seemed to have disappeared. Colt found himself alone, in the midst of a gunfight with suspects he hadn’t even seen yet.

  As abruptly as it started, the shooting ceased. When the scene had been secured, Colt discovered both of the bank robbery suspects had been killed in the gun battle.

  When he had confronted Damian about where the hell he had been during the whole thing, his partner had given him some cock-and-bull story about going back to the car for an extra clip, but he hadn’t believed him for a second.

  An ugly suspicion had begun to grow and he hadn’t been able to uproot it. If Damian had somehow been involved in the bank robberies—if he was the cunning mastermind they had been looking for—what better way to cover his tracks than to kill his associates and then set up a phony gunfight with a rookie agent too stupid to know any better?

  A few weeks later his partner resigned from the Bureau, but no amount of investigating by Colt could come up with a shred of proof against him.

  In the years since, the FBI had become increasingly aware of Damian’s other life as one of the most important organized-crime figures in the Bay Area, but they could never find any evidence that would stick, probably because of that damn leak. Damian had an uncanny ability to slip through any trap the Bureau set for him.

  Not this time. If they could find the financial records Michael Prescott kept against him that described his illegal empire in detail, they could put Damian away for a long, long time.

  This was his chance to redeem himself for not clueing in to Damian’s other side when he had the chance.

  He blinked away the thought and concentrated on Beck stead’s words. “I can’t say I’m happy about this, McKendrick,” his boss was saying, “but I suppose I’ll have to trust you know what you’re doing. I can give you another week.”

  “A week?” He straightened from the fence. “What if I need more time than that?”

  “See that you don’t. I want to move on this, get her and the kid into a safe house as soon as possible. One week, McKendrick. I’m afraid that’s all we can afford.”

  When the conversation was over, Colt pressed the end button on the slim cellular, shoved it back into his pocket and then swore, long and viciously.

  One lousy week to wrap up the case or he would have to turn it over to Beckstead. And he didn’t have the first idea where to go from here.

  His mood didn’t improve when he rode back to the house and found Joe Redhawk sauntering out of the barn, a bale of hay over one shoulder. He reined in Scout and nodded in greeting. “Where are Maggie and Nick?”

  Redhawk jerked his head toward the house but kept walking. “She’s inside fixing dinner. I imagine the kid’s with her.”

  He paused in the process of dismounting to stare at his foreman. “She’s what?”

  Joe hefted the hay over the fence into a feed trough, cut the baling twine holding it together with a pocketknife and started pitchforking it apart. “Hey, don’t blame me. It wasn’t my idea. I just own the place.”

  Colt rolled his eyes, knowing he would never hear the end of this one from his foreman. “Knock it off, Joe. Why is she cooking dinner?”

  “It’s Pablo’s week to cook but he wasn’t feeling too good so your doctor friend insisted on looking at him. Says he’s got the flu and needs to take it easy for a few days. While he’s down, she’ll take over the cooking, she said. I tried to tell her she was a guest in my house,” he said with that same damn mocking grin, “and she didn’t need to work to earn her keep, but she insisted until I didn’t have much of a choice but to let her. Pretty strong will on that one.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said glumly.

  Redhawk shoved his gloves into his back pocket and leaned his elbows on the top rail of the fence. “What’s her story, anyway? She in trouble?”

  “Big time.”

  “She kill somebody?”

  Colt flashed him a quick look but found only simple curiosity in his expression, instead of the bitterness he might have expected in any other man. Then again, Joe had always been good at putting on a stoic front for the world. Few would suspect his foreman had served three years in prison for killing his father to keep the drunk bastard from slashing his mother to ribbons with a bowie knife.

  If they hadn’t already been closer than blood, that alone would probably have cemented the bond between them. Joe had chosen a little more direct meth
od than Colt had, but they had both been responsible for their fathers’ deaths.

  He shoved the grim memories away. “No, she didn’t kill anybody.”

  While he uncinched the saddle from Scout, he wondered how much detail he could provide to Joe. On the phone yesterday, he had only told him that he was undercover on an assignment posing as a rodeo cowboy and that he needed to bring someone to stay at the ranch for a few days without blowing his cover.

  Joe had balked at first but eventually agreed to cooperate, especially when Colt promised a bonus to all the hands if they could manage to keep quiet about his other life. He deserved at least some background information for his help, Colt decided.

  “You’ve probably figured out Maggie’s on the run.”

  “Yeah. Who’s after her?”

  “Damian DeMarranville.”

  Joe winced. He was one of the few people Colt had confided in about his former partner. “Nasty business there.”

  “Right. Her husband cheated DeMarranville out of some serious money. Not only that, but he tried to cover his butt by keeping some very incriminating evidence against him. Before Damian’s hired gun killed him last month, Prescott told them the doc knows where to find the money and the evidence.”

  “Does she?”

  “No. Least she says she doesn’t, and Maggie Rawlings is not much of a liar.”

  “She’s not bad to look at, either. But I’m sure that’s a fact that wouldn’t have escaped the eye of a sharp FBI special agent like yourself.”

  He glared. “It’s business, Joe. Strictly business.”

  His protests must not have been very convincing. His foreman snorted. “Right. If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  “Why all the hush-hush undercover stuff? Why does the woman think you’re a dirt-poor cowboy instead of a big, hotshot FBI agent?”

  He felt a muscle in his jaw twitch. “I’ll tell her when the time is right. For now I’m just trying to protect her and figure out what she knows without losing her trust.”